


Once a Millennium

by Landi_Elliot



Series: October Tales [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Sex Education (TV)
Genre: Ancient Greece, Ancient History, Ancient Rome, Anger Management, Anglo-Saxon, Angst, Apples, Art, Dancing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, Extended Metaphors, First Time, Flying, Genderfluid Character, Halloween, Ineffability, Loss, Loss of Virginity, Love, Masturbation, Memory Related, Missing Scene, Multi, Norman Conquest, Pining, Pomegranates, Pompeii, Post-Canon, Pumpkins, Rituals, Scene: Flood in Mesopotamia 3004 BC (Good Omens), Second Time, Sexuality, Sexuality Crisis, Snakes, Stargazing, Stonehenge - Freeform, Trojan War, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Volcanoes, monastic life, sex therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-07 22:27:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21465526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Landi_Elliot/pseuds/Landi_Elliot
Summary: Three friends have challenged one another to write a Good Omens fic each before October is over. The last one to unfold her story is Iris who became “Sergeant Angel Cake” in the escape room based on Good Omens (see Part 2 of the October Tales series). Iris was inspired by her friend's remark about "penetrating the depths of time and space", so her story is a bit on the epic side.It is also a crossover with the TV series "Sex Education" - sometimes even angels and demons might need some of that (I mean sex education, not TV series). Therefore, the narrator of the story visits a sex therapist to find a way of dealing with his problem.This is part of the October Tales series but it can be read on its own.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: October Tales [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544227
Comments: 16
Kudos: 12





	1. The Void Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The narrator starts recounting his sexual history beginning with the first time.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 22**

Perhaps it is not the wisest way to choose a sex therapist, but it was the place that tempted me. Its magic enchanted me from the first glance: a cosy valley ensconced by rolling hills, a sweet meandering river with a voice that sounds like an old Welsh song. It is in Wales, actually, on the very border, and I half expected the therapist to speak with a lilting Welsh accent, but that would be asking too much. After all, I am not here to enjoy accents.

Jean, the sex therapist in question, lives in a detached house quite close to the river, and what a dainty house it is! It is carmine red with elegant white panelling, quite a striking sight. Turrets and terraces give a fairy-tale feel – or is it the Welsh beauty of the backdrop? Anyway, it’s perfectly delightful.

Jean has a 16-year-old son named Otis, and they are both most charming people. I really wish I could get to know them better, and I hope that eventually I will, but at the moment I am only a client, coming here several times a week for therapy sessions.

Needless to say, I can’t pretend to be human during these sessions. Sex therapy by its very nature requires such a degree of honesty and openness from a client, if they wish to find a solution for their problems, that posing as something you are not would make the whole procedure pointless. I am forced, therefore, to induce a half-sleep state upon my distinguished therapist while she is working with me. I make sure she always wakes up thinking about what she loves best and forgets about our conversations until our next meeting. Until they launch sex therapy in Heaven, this is the way it has to be, I am afraid. And my educated guess is they won’t be launching it any time soon.

You might wonder if a human therapist is qualified to deal with sexual issues an angel might have. I am asking myself the same question. But then there have always been trailblazers undaunted by unchartered waters. It won’t be the first time for me to set the precedent. I mean, for _us_. Me and my partner, because of whom I am here.

“You indicated in your email,” said Jean during our initial meeting, “that you are here because you would like to have sex with your partner more often.”

“That is correct.”

“How often do you usually have sex with your partner?”

“About once in a millennium, give or take.”

You see why I need to induce this dreamlike state upon Jean? This way, she is not surprised by anything I say and takes my unique condition for granted. No cognitive dissonance will disturb her, not scepticism will mar her judgment. I always come in early mornings: this causes the least disturbance to her daily routine. In addition, this way she may benefit from the pleasant aftermath of her half-sleep for the whole day after that. I also do my best to choose mornings when she is not with her sexual partners of which she seems to have a fair number. That is why it is seldom more often than twice a week.

I am proud to say that Jean’s analytic side, liberated from preconception and the white noise of everyday concerns, thrives and allows us to make impressive progress as a therapist and a client. She intends to take down what she calls my “sexual history” in order to get to the bottom of the problem. Jean is commendably thorough: to begin with, we have been going through groundwork and terminology for several sessions before we finally approach this history as such. So by now she knows basic things about angels and demons, including the ways we may be corporated and discorporated and what it entails. We do not get into theological side of the matter: I do hope it won’t be necessary. After all, it is not a priest I have chosen to talk to about all this.

“Let me get this straight, before we proceed, Mr Fell. Angels and demons use corporations, that is, human bodies, fully functioning and anatomically complete, but these bodies do not _have _to function to full capacity. Various physiological processes can be started by the act of volition.”

“You formulate it so much better than I did, Jean.”

“Which means that they do not normally experience hormonal secretion.”

“Precisely.”

“Which in its turn rules out sexual attraction and desire, unless they specifically start this process by themselves.”

“Yes, that is correct. You may say that by default we are devoid of sexuality, unless we really make an effort.”

“Well, Mr Fell, I think I have by now appraised the general picture. Are you ready to go into specifics of the history of your sexual relationship with your partner?”

“Quite ready.”

“And your partner is a demon whose corporation adheres to the same mechanics?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”

“In that case, Mr Fell, why don’t you tell me about your first time? What started this process for you and your partner?”

She leans back into her armchair with apparent ease, but she is an intent listener, even in her half-sleep. I must say I have been waiting for this moment. It is an immense relief to tell about this to a sentient being, although I am not sure I will find the words in the human language to describe our first time as it was. It is now the hour of the dawn, and I can see morning mist floating over the valley, imbuing the yellowing woods with the enigma of a new day. Yes, there was a lot of enigma in our first time.

“It happened in 3004 BC. The Year of the Flood. Exactly 1000 years after the Beginning. We had seen a lot of death and violence in those first 1000 years, of course. Too much, I should say. In a way, we got… what it is word you use when you stop responding acutely to something you have seen too often?”

“Do you mean desensitisation?”

“Yes, thank you, Jean, that’s the one. We both got desensitised, I suppose. But the Flood was more than too much. The totality of it was overwhelming.

I mean, with war or famine there are survivors, there is hope. But the Flood targeted every human being, every animal, very crop. Every house they built, every garden they tended. Every little thing they loved and every place they called their own.

I tried to cling to the thought of Noah and his Arc. That should have given me the hope I needed. But somehow it didn’t work. The demon’s remarks, as we were standing in the crowd watching Noah and his family getting ready, were not very conducive to my peace of mind either.

I thought he was making fun of God. He was a demon, after all. He said “you can’t kill kids” just as several young goats ran past – we were speaking the local language, and the word “kids” in it meant both “children” and “young goats”, just as it does in English. I was certain he was being ironic. It was making it all worse. There was this sinking sensation inside my soul, this abyss opening, this nauseating hollow that was swarming with hungry shadows.

The rain started, quickly growing into a downpour. The storm was raging. It was then that I looked into his eyes, strikingly yellow and raving, and _saw_. The abyss inside him was even deeper than mine. He was shaken by it all, but he was also intense and furious. The demon was on the verge of rebelling and actually attempting to rescue some children from the Flood. Yes, by “kids” he did mean _children_.

“There is nothing we can do,” I whispered and he gave out a cry of frustration. Then he opened his black wings and flew straight up. I felt scared and lost: the loneliness that engulfed me was too much to bear. I didn’t know what else to do – so I just followed him. We were getting higher and higher in the sky that seemed to consist entirely of endless layers of black and angry clouds.

It was amazing when we finally tore through the clouds and found ourselves in the sunlit skyscape. There was nothing to do but to fly.

Angels and demons can travel in a variety of ways – walk on Earth as humans do, move through electric currents or telephone wires, and, above all, fly. Once our wings are unleashed, our corporations are no longer bound by their physicality. Speed becomes the outer function of will, while coldness and atmospheric currents of the upper skies turn into just two more emotions. 

I suppose we both expressed our fear of existential emptiness in that flight. We flew and flew and flew until daylight began to fail. We reached the end of the cloud front and saw towering mountain peaks. I had no idea where we were, but from what I know now it must have been Tibet. We descended and landed in two exhausted heaps on the rocky ground, in a valley surrounded by majestic mountains. The beauty of it was beyond description.

“The void inside. Do you feel it still?” I asked him in the language of Heaven. He had been an angel once, so he could not have forgotten. He looked at me, his eyes suddenly filling the whole world around me. And he said…”

I don’t know how to convey to Jean what he said. I am not even sure he said it in words. If they were words, I can’t recall which language he used. It was more like the continuation of the flight and the pain of the internal abyss all rolled into one and into something bigger. Something different that he was now offering to me as a root to cling to as you are sliding slowly down the cliff. I guess, if I were to translate it into the local and contemporary language, that would be a simple “Let’s fuck, angel”, but in this simplicity there was something primal and fierce. I think about it for a while and then say out loud:

“And he said “Let’s make love”. It sounded more like “Let’s invent it.” Does it make sense?”

“Did it make sense to you at that moment?”

“It did. It was the only thing that could. That – and the mountains around us.”

“What happened next?”

What happened next was his eyes, the size of the world, the colour of primordial sunrise. That was where I started. I touched them and as he closed his eyes instinctively his long lashes tickled my fingertips. This sent little sparks of sensations down my whole corporation. He held my wrists then and removed them from his face to look at them. Then he drew them back and placed my hands on his cheeks. The sparks were everywhere, whirling, dancing, arousing.

I don’t know how long we spent just doing this – touching and looking and tracing the lines and curves of our faces. After a while we did this to the whole of our bodies, waking up senses and desires in whirlwinds of sparks as we were exploring shoulder blades and knees and hips. And wings, too, feather to feather. We left nothing unexplored. It was primal and it was void-filling. I don’t know how much time passed – it seemed like the night came and went and the valley was sunlit again. Or several nights and days. But we were still busy inventing love.

Somehow I manage to convey all this to Jean.

“So, did this mean,” she asks when my story is over, “that you started those processes that account for sexuality?”

“We did, yes, at least _I_ surely did. But still it wasn’t like with humans. I wouldn’t wake up every morning with erection or feel constant sexual desire.”

“It is not exactly like this for humans either, Mr. Fell.”

“No? Well, what I mean is, it was woken, definitely, but it didn’t turn into this constant presence in my life. It became… let us say… dormant… but palpable and ready to be summoned, if needed.”

“Ready to be summoned? Do you mean it was under your control?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“And it was summoned again… in another 1000 years?”

“Almost. 892 years later.”

“Well, that was most informative, Mr Fell. Shall we resume our discussion at our next session?”

“Certainly. And thank you so much for this talk. And… Jean?”

“Yes?”

“Do call me Aziraphale.”

**Comments under the post**

**Sergeant Tattoo**: Hey, you didn’t warn us we should watch _Sex Education_ first! It’s on Netflix, right? I’m on it.

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: How much more sex education do you need, Sergeant Tattoo? As to your story, Sergeant Angel Cake, that is the penetration we’ve been waiting for. When’s the next instalment? Remember, it’s got to be finished in October!

**As_Era_Failed: **Wings are sexy, especially when you catch thermals. But don’t tell your therapist.


	2. Stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this session, the narrator tells the therapist about the second time, revealing his partner's (as well as his own) genderfluidity.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 24**

These mornings in early October are glorious. I travel down by train before my sessions, spend the night at a quaint little BnB and then walk to Jean’s house in the hour before dawn. The moment when the sky becomes grey and the outline of the hills slowly emerges in its watercolor translucency sends shivers down my spine. It’s a long walk, but it’s worth every second of it. Judging by the way the morning watercolor unfolds today, the clouds won’t prevent me from seeing the sunrise.

Jean looks very snug in her fluffy yellow robe, as she gets into her arm-chair, facing mine. She used a lighter robe in September, but the mornings are getting colder after the Equinox. Her son Otis is moving in his room upstairs and I wonder vaguely why he is not asleep at this early hour. There are other small noises and rustles in the house: a leaking tap, a creaky floor, a curtain whispering in the breeze coming in from the half-opened window. It makes it all the more welcoming and cosy.

“So, Aziraphale…” Jean pauses after saying my name.

“What is it, Jean?”

“Your name somehow sounds even more formal than your last name,” she confesses.

“I do apologize, Jean. Do use the name or the surname – whatever that you are more comfortable with.”

“My comfort is not the object here, Aziraphale,” Jean rallies quickly. “Whatever sets you at ease is fine. So Aziraphale it is, just as you asked.”

“I am at ease, Jean. Thank you.”

Surprisingly, I am. Even the fact that the part of the story I am going to tell requires more explanation of the mechanics does not disturb me one bit. Somehow I am comfortable talking about anatomy and sexuality with Jean. So I venture straight into it.

“One more thing about corporations, Jean. I think we haven’t discussed the gender issue yet.”

“I don’t believe we have. What is it that you wish me to know?”

“Well, angels are originally genderless. But corporations are fully functional male or female bodies; therefore, they induce a gendered personality, or rather push an angel to develop such a personality according to the standards of a certain time and place.”

“You are incorporated as a male, as I presume, Aziraphale. Does this mean you identify as a male?”

“That is exactly the point I wanted to make, Jean. What you suggest is the logical thing to assume, but no. I rather tend to identify as a male _at the moment_, but it’s not a constant. There is… certain fluidity to my gender identification.”

“Can you elaborate on that, Aziraphale?”

“Certainly, Jean. My initial corporation, just as the demon’s, was male. Our first time, the one I described, was when we were both in male bodies. But we can metamorphose our corporations: the demon, for example, can turn into a snake easily. I suppose we both can turn into any number of animals, but I have never tried it, and his chosen metamorphose is only a serpent.

As to the gender issue, the slight modifications are easily achieved. We both had our missions set by our respective authorities and on many occasions, female corporations served our purposes better. So by the end of the second millennium on Earth, we had both been well acquainted with female corporations and developed personalities more suited to these bodies.

“Would you say that being in a female body affected your sexuality?”

“Yes and no. On the one hand, a female corporation offered different ways of achieving pleasure and I admit I spent a considerable amount of time exploring of them. I was… curious, you see. I suppose I still am. On the other hand, the overall state of my sexuality was just as I described: dormant until consciously summoned. Male or female – it didn’t matter. It was under control and not getting in the way.”

“It seemed to me that you mentioned “different ways of achieving pleasure” with a certain relish, Aziraphale. Am I right in assuming you preferred the female version of your corporation?”

“In terms of sexuality, perhaps. I can’t be certain because… well… as you will see I didn’t have enough experience to make conclusive comparisons. But in terms of being a woman, as a social construct, I must give a definite no. In fact, it was so bad sometimes that I completely stopped using my female corporation by the end of the second millennium.”

“Why is that, Aziraphale?”

“Well, it’s what we call patriarchy now. The way female bodies are constantly under male control. The way men think they possess you by definition. I got too tired of those looks, you know. The demon… well, when he was in a female corporation, he had a way of dealing with males – he was much better at it than I ever could hope to be. They just didn’t dare to think of him… or should I say _her_… that way. She had a way of showing that she was off limits for anyone less significant that a god. I admired her for that. The demon was actually a _she_ during our second time.”

“And you?”

“In my male corporation.”

“And that was... when?”

“2112 BC. On this very island, actually. In the place you know now as Stonehenge.”

“So you lived among the Celts then?”

“Oh no, no, Celts came here much later. Those were tribes that used to live here before the Celts. They were the people that actually built Stonehenge. With a little help from me and the demon, that is. But it still took centuries and centuries to accomplish.”

I guess we started helping them because we couldn’t bear how long it was taking and how hard the process was. The wheel wasn’t even invented yet, so they used those tree logs to move huge stones around. For some reason they had to have those bluestones from around here – Wales, the Preseli Hills more to the west from this valley, closer to the coast. I couldn’t help myself: I made the whole transportation process much easier for them, preventing hundreds of deaths and injuries. Somehow the memory of it survived and transformed into a much later legend about Merlin. Crowley and I had a good laugh about it in the 13th century.

It was easy reporting our involvement with the construction of Stonehenge as success to our respective authorities: as a sacred burial ground where the dead were honoured and remembered in my case, and as a place of satanic worship for Crowley. Personally, he was more obsessed with the astronomical side of it: all those alignments with Solstices and Equinoxes, all the stargazing it allowed. He performed the satanic-ritual part just to be able to carry on his own projects. In 2112 BC, during what now is known as the third phase of Stonehenge construction, he was a she, a high priestess of some sort, looking magnificent with a cascade of copper hair and making the rituals demonically creative. I sneaked in into one of them, just to look at her. I thought I could be inconspicuous, but obviously she detected me. A tiny flicker in her yellow eyes, and there we were, aware of each other, connected. Well, I’d better describe it all to Jean from this moment.

“She was performing a ritual for Summer Solstice: she was actually dancing when I arrived furtively, but she knew I was there. When my partner is in his male corporation, he is tall and skinny, all sharpness and angles. She is all that in the female form as well, but there is more fluidity and smoothness in her movements. Besides, there is this striking flexibility – it comes from the serpentine part of her I believe – which she used in that dance to full capacity. She was getting the crowd into some kind of trance and I felt transfixed by it myself. Then she started adding some movements which only I could interpret – they were from Egypt a few centuries back, each with an indecent meaning attached. To anyone else there they must have looked perfectly innocent, but I was able to read the story her dance was telling and I could hardly supress the laughter. Only she could do it – performing a highly sacred rite and a tongue-in-cheek pantomime at the same time.”

“Did you feel that dance established a sort of connection between you?’ Jean asks. “An intimacy?”

“It certainly did.”

“Did you feel arousal?”

“I let myself feel it, yes. It felt a perfect moment to do so – I planned to disappear quietly and pleasure myself in solitude. I didn’t expect it would lead us to… consummating our connection, if I may say so.”

“Did you or do you often do it this way – masturbating, after being aroused by your partner?”

“In those times it happened about once in a hundred years. Would you say that was often?”

“It is hard for me to say. Did it feel like often to you?”

“It felt like not as often as I wished, but in those times we really made a point of not showing anything but enmity to each other when our paths crossed. So it was a luxury I preserved for special occasions. That night felt like very special, for some reason.”

“So what happened after the dance?”

“There was a feast in the settlement nearby where everyone went after the ritual, but the high priestess, along with several other women in her service, was supposed to stay behind in the Inner Circle and keep vigil until the Solstice Sunrise. As the crowd moved towards the fires of the village, I got ready to sneak away, but I felt a hand on my shoulder.”

I don’t tell Jean what Crowley said then, but her voice still rings in my ears. “You oaf”, she said. “Get us some firewood, enough to last the night. And don’t make the High Priestess impatient – or I’ll have to curse your offspring and their offspring and… do you think your offspring’s offspring will have offspring or can we leave it at that?”

“I’ll get that firewood, while you figure it out, then... lady?” I said, suppressing both a giggle and a blush, as best I could. Luckily, getting the firewood (which I just miracled into being as soon as I got out of sight of the women) gave me some breathing space. So, Crowley was inviting me… tempting me, perhaps… to share her vigil at Stonehenge. I wasn’t at all surprised when her attending women were all asleep when I got back. But what did she have in mind?

“It turned out that she was desperate for someone to show around her astronomy temple – someone who didn’t think the world was riding on the back of some reptile, as she put it. She gave me a proper tour – the inner and the outer circles, the eastern avenue leading to the Heel Stone – _that’s where the sun will rise!_ – the trilithons, the alter stone – it was standing up in those days – the locations from which Equinoxes could be seen, star alignments… It was magnificent in those days, all stones standing erect in complete, perfect circles. I was looking more at the stones, to be honest, while she was gazing up at the stars. It was a warm, starlit night in June.”

“Why were you looking at the stones, Aziraphale?”

“Well, I said _more_ at the stones. More at the stones than at the stars, that is. Because… well, it gave me more opportunity to cast glances at _her_.”

Jean’s question was very apt. I only realised it when I answered it. Crowley felt that, of course. “Have you been ogling me, angel?” she said. “See anything you like?”

“I’ve been wondering about the way you move. Female corporation suits you – you look like you’re more comfortable in your skin.”

“What utter nonsense! It’s just this priestessing business. You have to look enticing enough to have credibility. Don’t tell me you’ve been enticed as well.”

I hesitated and she smirked. Then she said:

“I remember you being quite an enticing female yourself. A while ago. Why don’t you do it anymore?”

“You know why, Crowley. Couldn’t cope with the... constant attention from males. I am not like you – I can’t scare them off with a single glance.”

“Scare them off, my arse. Did you see that thug with bear tattoos all over the place? He is planning to gang-rape me with his buddies.”

I was aghast.

“Crowley, but you wouldn’t…”

“Of course I wouldn’t silly, but I am fed up, to be honest. Yes, I am much better than you, big softie, at making them keep their distance and stuff their dirty looks where the sun doesn’t shine, but it’s getting to me as well. So these are my last female days.”

I let out a sign of disappointment and then quickly placed my hand on the nearest sarsen stone. “Will you look at that crevice? Did they drop it when…”

But she was looking at me, not at the stone. Then she slowly put her hand on top of mine and spoke softly.

“They must have. They always do. Human hands are so clumsy. So, if someone’s hands ever touch this body before I am done with it, I’d prefer them to be an angel’s.”

So I explained to Jean how Crowley wanted to feel what a female body feels during sex – _just so that I know, see, for future reference and such_ – how it turned out she hardly ever so much as touched herself. I had remembered quite well all the sensitive spots I had discovered from when I was in my female corporation and I was pleased to share all this with her. When, after a lot of kisses and touches, I put my fingers gently inside her, I got a surprise though.

“You are a virgin, Crowley.”

“What?! I’m not! I did it with _you_, stupid angel. Have you forgotten?”

“I remember, my dear. How can I forget? What I mean is… you have a _hymen_.”

“I have a _what_?”

I sighed. How on Earth did she manage to do all this priestessing without even knowing the local word for the hymen. I said it in several other languages, but her gaze was blank. I tried to remember the word for hymen in the language of Heaven, but I couldn’t. We certainly didn’t talk much of hymens up there. There was the word for virgin, of course, but it wasn’t helpful. So I explained the anatomy as best I could.

“Ah.” Crowley said. “That. So. What do we do?”

“You could transform yourself slightly, I suppose. Otherwise it might be a bit painful. Sometimes there’s blood, I believe.”

“How many virgins have you violated then, angel?”

“Crowley, _please_.”

“All right, sorry, my holy friend. Anyway, I have a weird inclination to do this the human way. After all, we sorted things out pretty well, when we did it the first time. When was it… 500 years ago?”

“892.”

“Really? Well, high time for more fun, don’t you think? Now, where were we... where was your hand, I mean…”

Jean wanted details, so I recounted how I miracled some olive oil and rubbed it gently into the folds of her skin, as she was reclining with her back against the sarsen stone, how I explored her with my fingers first, until she got noticeably wet and started moaning. I still hesitated so she shouted at me that if I was waiting for her to repeat those Egyptian dance moves, I had another think coming. So I moved closer, but she suddenly pinned me to the ground and got on top. That was when I finally looked at the stars – for one brief moment they were motionless and then abruptly, dizzily, they jumped into a frantic dance.

There was no blood and very little pain, as Crowley told me later, and she was indefatigable, unstoppable and wild. If the first time came and went in a kind of primal haze, this time it was all sharp and vivid, every move and every moan imprinted in my memory with precision. She was mad about what I could do with my hands and I was losing myself completely when she touched me with her lips and tongue. The standing stones and the earth beneath them were perhaps not ideal for love-making, but somehow they helped. So did the stars, although we hardly noticed when they disappeared. We also missed the Solstice Sunrise.

There is the sunrise now, flooding in through Jean’s eastern window. It lights up the room and Jean looks golden in her robe. She is no stranger to making love all night long, I realize, and she does it often enough. Does it feel often to her? Too often? Not often enough? At least she lives in an age when she has all the opportunities to figure it out for herself and act accordingly.

What does Crowley feel about our once-in-a-millennium sex life? Why am I here talking to Jean about it and not in London, talking to him? These thoughts pass quickly through my head as the sunrise signals my time to depart. It seems to me I can feel Crowley’s female smell in the air for a moment. Sometimes my memory is excruciatingly good.

“Well, thank you, Aziraphale,” Jean says languidly. She is moments away from her happy awakening now and she is positively glowing. “I believe we’ve had a very fruitful session today.”

“So we have, Jean, and it’s me who is grateful. Hopefully, we’ll have another fruitful session as soon as possible.”

But from her vibes I know that it won’t be for several days now. And as she wakes up in her happy and erotic mood, I am already on my sunlit walk back.

**Comments under the post**

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: They missed the Solstice Sunrise at Stonehenge?! As I often say, you guys miss so much because of your sex fixation.

**Sergeant Tattoo**: Come off it, Cap! What’s more romantic than this?

**As_Era_Failed: **I agree. Nothing’s more romantic than deflowering a poor demon oppressed by patriarchy on a pile of stones.


	3. Apple Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During the next session with the therapist the narrator talks about the time when he got really angry with his partner.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 25**

I love strolling along London streets in autumn. Today I leave the bookshop at dusk and walk through Soho and then up to Bloomsbury. Almost every building is a friend or a memory. I have lived in London for quite a while.

There are layers and layers of memories in my head. I sometimes feel like an archeologist when I sift through these endless layers. I can see the outlines of entire epics of countries and civilisations buried there. There are cities that I loved more than I ever will love London. I simply do not allow myself to give my heart fully to a place. Not anymore. Not after what happened to…

…Troy. “Troy” says a huge banner on the British Museum. An exhibition about Troy will open from November 21 this year. I look at the row of columns that adorn the museums pompous façade, and I imagine a different building in a different time and place – it is not hard in the dimming light. I whisper its name. Troy, the beautiful Troy, the mighty Ilion. I do not need to go deep into the layers to summon the memory of it. It’s always lurking just below the surface. A Greek statue, a portico, a fountain can trigger it at any time. Do you have any idea how many Greek-looking statues and constructions there are in London?

It’s time for me to find a taxi if I want to get to Paddington Station in time to catch my train. I won’t tell all I can tell about Troy to Jean – that would take too long and it is not entirely necessary to my story. But at the moment I have my train journey and the whole night ahead to reminisce. As the darkness falls over England, the sun rises over Troy, my inner Troy, because the real Troy is lost.

I greet the rising sun standing on the eastern wall. The Citadel is behind me, and there are two flanking towers on the left and on the right. I decide to walk to the left tower and observe the northern view, which rolls down towards the narrow current of Hellespont. In the evening I’ll climb the walls again and look upon the sunset over the Aegean Sea and the port crowded with trading vessels. Meanwhile, my walk lies from the Upper city to the Lower, where, after descending a thousand short and long stairs, I’ll get to my house which stands on a crescent, just two streets of the square with the Temple of Athena and the Dolphin fountain. Climbing vines weave into a canopy over the front door, and my little garden is enlivened with the small statues of Asclepius and his daughters. I have lived here for several centuries as a healer: I travel to Greece every 30 years or so and then come back as my own son, a new healer, just as good as his father was. The city, as many other cities, suffered from earthquakes and fires, but they never destroyed it completely: every time it was rebuilt and soon made vibrant once again. As to enemies, no enemy would scale those walls. They are impenetrable. Or so we thought…

Crowley came to Troy at about 1200 BC. I really wished I could show him around personally but that would be too risky, so I instructed one of my younger and more agile servants to take him to all the best places, making sure he climbs all the thousand stairs and hidden passages. Crowley just rolled his eyes and said he wasn’t there for the sightseeing. Obviously not, but... I insisted he should see the marvels of Ilion.

“Marvels, you say? Well, marvel at them while you can. They won’t be here for much longer.”

He explained he was ordered to stir up some trouble between Greece and Troy. I felt the familiar abyss opening up inside. He must have seen it in my eyes.

“Don’t fret, angel, it may still come to nothing. I don’t have any bright ideas, anyway. Apples is all I can think of when I am told to stir up some amorphous trouble. So, perhaps, some posh ladies will scratch one another’s faces and it will stop at that.”

“Your apple tricks tend to have dire consequences, demon.”

“Thank you kindly,” he said with some bitterness. “Why are you so thrilled about this place, anyway? Haven’t you learnt your lesson at the Flood? Everything will be destroyed, sooner or later, one way or another. You haven’t made this place your _home_, have you? We have no home, angel. And will never have one.”

He was right, of course. Nevertheless, I was overwhelmed with the desire to protect Troy, no matter what.

“What kind of apple trouble, Crowley?”

“Why? Are you going to thwart my wiles, angel?”

“Isn’t it what I am supposed to do?”

My train arrives at the station and another taxi takes me to my BnB where I spend the night meandering in the labyrinth of my Trojan memories. Crowley stirred the trouble using what was later dubbed the Apple of Discord – with the words “to the most beautiful” written on it. The eternal sin of vanity – so simple, so devastating. It was not a squabble of goddesses though: that was what imaginative Greeks came up with much later: it was a human feast and mortal women who could not bear to see this apple given to someone else. Paris of Troy gave it to Helen of Sparta and that was enough for her to abandon her husband and elope with him to Troy.

Crowley was right: it could still come to nothing. And I did what I could to urge the Trojans to act rationally: I was a trusted healer with quite a reputation and many nobles listened to me. I was often consulted by the house of Priam, and Hector was almost a friend. He agreed with all my counsels and did what he could to prevent the war. But we both failed – Crowley’s apples do have dire consequences. It still hurts me to think of Hector and Andromache and their children.

And it hurts to think it all could have been different. There was a checkmate, an impasse – and the Greeks were about to leave, taking all their ships with them. It hurts most of all to think that Crowley played the final part, making the downfall of Troy inevitable. It was him who fed Odysseus the horse idea. For Crowley, horses were always a deadly weapon. And it was Crowley who prevented Laocoön from convincing the Trojans to destroy the horse.

“I _had_ to, angel. Direct orders. Satan knows what Troy had done to deserve this fate, but I couldn’t exactly oppose the direct order, could I? They were too horse-loving, your Trojans. Horse-loving and other-people’s-wives-loving. Admit it, they had it coming. And I did not kill Laocoön’s kids! I whisked them away while no one was looking, so they grew up to be happy shepherds in Anatolia. I can’t kill kids, you know that!”

And yet hundreds of children were killed as the doomed Ilion was sacked and burned, as houses fell, fountains were crushed, walls ruined and the Citadel destroyed. When the Greeks were done with Troy, it was obvious the city would never rise again, not the way it had risen before. I healed the survivors who fled to the country and then a dark cloud fell on my mind. I knew it was irrational, but I felt wrath directed at Crowley. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was a deadly sin, after all.

This is the point where I actually start my story to Jean, when I finally find myself in her sleepy house, on yet another early October morning. She looks serene and cuddly in her yellow-robed glow of half-sleep: I can see she has had quite pleasant sexual encounters in these past few days. And yet there is a darkness inside her, a pain that is stuck like a needle. I feel an urge to reach out and pull it out of her, yet I know too well that is not done this way. Not even angelic fingers can pull these needles out of human souls. It’s Jean’s own mission. I sigh and start my Troy tale, from the moment the city went up in flames, in 1180 BC.

“I walked along the coast. I thought vaguely of flying, as my partner and I did during the Flood, but my wings felt heavy and unwieldy. The weight of my loss was great and the pressure of my wrath even greater. So I walked.

There were long pebbly beaches and steep cliffs; there were paths through olive groves and pine-tree woods, where the chorus of cicadas was deafening. I walked and walked, taking no food or drink, letting the noises of the sea and the wind and cicadas drown out the noise in my head – the screams, the pleas, the familiar voice saying _I had to. Direct orders. _The taste of wrath is hot and bitter.”

I look at Jean – it seems like her half-sleep is turning into a full-sleep. I’d better speed my story up.

“After several days I realised I was being followed. The rustling sound of a scaly body on the rocks and pebbles. Barely audible, but I knew it well. It was not the first time he followed me like this. At other times, I was soothed by this sound, feeling protected. Not this time.”

“Do you mean your partner followed you in the shape of a snake?” Jean asks, looking a bit less sleepy.

“Yes. He did.”

“How did it make you feel at that moment, Aziraphale?”

“Indignant. Furious. Impatient. I told him to leave me alone. But I knew well he wouldn’t.”

“How did you know it?”

“I didn’t want him to leave me alone. The only way to get rid of the weight on my soul was to confront him. But I wasn’t ready for that. So I kept walking. And he kept following me.”

“How long did it go on?”

“I couldn’t say. Days. Weeks. Until I stopped in the middle of another beach and just collapsed. He was upon me in a second, having transformed into his usual corporation.”

“Male, I presume?”

“Yes, male. He hadn’t been in a female one since Stonehenge. At least I didn’t see him as _her_. He looked very Achaean in fact, which didn’t help at all. I pushed him away and told him to leave me alone, one more time.”

It is a strange thing about me and Crowley: I may feel mad at him and even walk away, but when he becomes furious, I melt. I can watch his fury as a ballet or listen to it as to a symphony. Perhaps, that was what I was subconsciously hoping for. How I could admire him in spite of my own wrath, I have no idea. But he did get angry. And I did catch my breath.

“Now, _listen_ you pathetic angel. What did I do exactly? Tell me – what did I do that has upset you so much? Did I burn? Did I rape? Did I slaughter? All right, I throttled Laocoön, I admit, but it was inevitable anyway, at least I gave him enough drama to be immortalised. But did I ruin your precious Troy? Answer me, angel! I gave them the apple, granted, but did I force them to fight over it? They did it by themselves. Did I push Helen into Paris’s arms? Did I turn Agamemnon into the arrogant, self-centred bastard or was he already there, without anyone’s help? I am a trickster, all right? Instigator and trouble maker. They have their own free will to oppose me, don’t they? DON’T THEY?”

I didn’t answer him. He groaned in exasperation and then suddenly looked around vehemently.

“It must be somewhere here! I am sure of it. Mount Chimaera. Come on, angle, get a grip. Your turn to follow me.”

With this he stated walking away from the sea, onto a path that led to the mountains. I stood there for a while – the world seemed to stand still, too, all cicadas in the grove fell silent. Then, reluctantly, but with secret relief, I followed him.

“There was a mountain in Lycia – perhaps it is still there, in modern Turkey I mean, where natural fires burn,” I explain to Jean. “It was named Mount Chimaera – with a legend attached, a hero slaying a monster, of course. That was where the demon led me – we reached the slope with the flames by dusk. When the night fell, I could only see the tongue of flames bursting from under rocks and the demon’s eyes reflecting those flames. He told me to sit and watch the fires, then he summoned an amphora full of Lycian wine and told me to drink. Then he told me to talk.”

“It sounds like he gave you orders and you obeyed. Did you enjoy that?”

“It wasn’t enjoyment as such. Not submission either. It was a kind of abandonment. I am not sure I am making myself clear, Jean.”

“Clear enough, Aziraphale. Do go on, then. What happened next?”

“It turned into a wake, I suppose. I talked, I told tales of Troy, of its stairs, its fountains, its people. Of Hector and Andromache and their mutual tenderness. Of Cassandra and her prophesies – some of them grave and frightening, some quite witty and playful, as she herself could be on a good day. Of Hecuba’s personal cook – the sweetmeats she could make like nothing else I’ve tasted since. Of old Anchises’s constant talk of “how I shagged Aphrodite”. Of his good-natured and giggly daughter Hippodamia and the amusing way she rolled her eyes at her dad’s ramblings… The flames of Mount Chimaera were the candles of the wake and the wine was the sacred drink to honour the dead and the lost.”

“And did your partner say or do anything?”

“He was mostly silent. He drank, he listened, he sometimes smiled or nodded his head. And then, when I ran out of words, he asked me if I was still angry with him.”

“And were you?”

Was I? The shape and the taste of my pain had been changing throughout my talk. The hot part was gone, and the bitterness metamorphosed into a cicada chorus of a Greek tragedy, prophesising emptiness and more pain. And yet who was there to fill the emptiness but my demon? What was there to even come close to the hope of consolation but his presence? I felt furious it was this way. It was unfair. So unfair. That was when he held me close.

“We are what we are, unfair as it may seem. We’ve got to live with this, angel. Somehow. And for a very long time. The luxury of oblivion is not for us.”

“We are what we are,” I echoed. “And yet…”

“And yet? There is no “and yet” here, angel.”

“_Direct orders_.”

“What? Have you cracked at last, Aziraphale? Last thing I need is an insane angel on my hands.”

“She said it to me once, Cassandra. _In the end you’ll both disobey, and that will save the day_. It must have been a prophesy about us, Crowley.”

“Was it a grave or a witty one?”

“I don’t know. But perhaps we’ll find out, one day.”

“And save it, that one day,” he smirked. “Oh you silly angel.”

And he held me close till the sunrise. I was nursing my abandonment and listening to his heartbeat.

“Were you angry with him, Aziraphale?” Jean repeated.

“No, I wasn’t. I couldn’t be – it all burned up in the flames of Mount Chimaera that night. And at sunrise I spread my wings. They felt light again. My partner followed suit immediately. _Race you, angel_, he said and kicked off.”

It was a very different kind of flight from the one we had in the Flood. And it didn’t last long – we only got a bit to the east along the coast and then inland – Crowley spotted a winding canyon and descended on a huge rock caught between two steep stone walls. That was where we made love, in a fast, lightening-like manner, all the pent up passion suddenly released as a deadly arrow speeded up by the hand of a god. Well, I did read Homer many centuries later, so some of his imagery must have stuck. But I keep off metaphors as I relate it all to Jean.

“Only once?” Jean specifies.

“Yes, just once, and very quickly, but somehow it was utterly and deeply satisfying and liberating.”

“And how did you feel after that? Was your pain diminished?”

“I suppose it was. Troy became a memory – a layered, complex, disturbing one, of course, but a memory nevertheless. Not a wound.”

“Would you say sex with your partner has a healing effect? There seem to be a pattern.”

“There must be, if you put it like this. But I wouldn’t say “healing”. Although, it was me who used the wound metaphor. I should really use less figurative language.”

“Descriptive language is good, Aziraphale, metaphors including. They show the patterns you live by. Do not try to avoid them, please.”

“All right, Jean, if you say so.”

“I have also observed that you omit parts of your stories. Is there something too personal in them to share?”

She is definitely not sleepy anymore. I add a tad of drowsiness in the air around us and she yawns. Still, it’s a very good-morning kind of yawn. Perhaps there was something in my story that touched Jean’s awakening string. And I am becoming way too metaphoric for my own liking. Let’s get it over with.

“I will try to share more fully in the future, Jean. Thank you so much for your attention. I really must be going now.”

And I briskly leave her room, rushing out for a breath of fresh morning air. There is a whiff of burning leaves coming from somewhere. My mind races to the next episode I’ll have to relate to Jean. That would be perhaps a bit easier to share. There is slight breeze, still carrying the burning smell, and a rustle of leaves as I walk away from the red and white house.

**Comments under the post**

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: So that’s why there are no kids next to Laocoön at the satanic nunnery! I’ve been wondering about that. Good timing, too. Keep it up!

**Sergeant Tattoo**: Aw, I feel like I’ve lost Troy myself now! Why don’t we go to London to see that Troy exhibition, the three of us? That should be fun. I can get some time off before Christmas.

**As_Era_Failed: **The author really has a thing for rocks, doesn’t she? What’s next, Giant’s Causeway?


	4. Crushed Pomegranates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During this session the narrator revisits the events of one of the most famous disasters in history and gets asked some uncomfortable questions by his therapist.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 27**

There is a fine drizzle when I return to Jean’s house just a few days later. The morning is dark grey and chilly – it must be the end of the Indian summer. Crowley gets a bit tetchy in this weather: he teased me more than usual last night at the Ritz and then asked me to stay a while longer when I was about to leave and then finally just raised an eyebrow and left abruptly himself when I said I had a train to catch. I feel a bit guilty about all this, but then again, I do need to see this through. I look at the gathering clouds and, as always, search for a silver lining.

It seems like Jean has been unconsciously working on my case – it could not have been conscious, of course, but she does have some notes and diagrams on her lap. I have mixed feelings about it: on the one hand, I don’t want her to get too involved because then it would be hard for me to maintain her partial amnesia. I really don’t want to mess with her mind more than necessary. On the other hand, I do need what her intellect and intuition can offer, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I brace myself and bless her leaking tap to calm myself down. I might pursue my own goals here, but I am still determined not to produce any detrimental effects on my kind therapist.

“I have accumulated a few questions, Aziraphale,” she says. “If you don’t mind.”

“But of course. Do go ahead, Jean.”

“You keep referring to the person you want to have more sex with as “my partner” or “the demon”. You haven’t mentioned his name in our sessions. Is this deliberate?”

“I confess it is. It may sound silly, but I am trying to protect his anonymity. Do you think I should mention him by name?”

“You should refer to him in a way that is comfortable and helps you talk about him.”

“Oh good.”

“But still… the term “partner” is interesting. Do you think _he_ would describe _you_ as his “partner”?”

After about a dozen sarcastic remarks, probably. Although… no. Not even after that.

“No, I don’t think he would,” I say out loud.

“So you don’t suppose he considers you two a couple?”

I shift in my armchair. Does he? But how can he not? But _does_ he?

“You seem to hesitate,” Jean observes mildly.

“I do, don’t I?” I try to smile. “Well, let’s say it never came up. But two are a couple, if they have sex, aren’t they?”

“Not necessarily. Not unless they think they are a couple and act as such. But perhaps it is wiser to return to this issue later.”

I try to conceal my sigh of relief. Jean fidgets with some of her notes.

“I’ve done some calculations, based on what you have told me. Am I right in predicting that your next intercourse took place in the second century BC?”

“It was a very close thing, in 147 BC, the year Carthage fell, and then another very close one a century later, during Vercingetorix’s revolt, and then a third time, another century later, in Rome 41 AD, before Caligula’s assassination. But somehow it didn’t actually happen till 79 AD. Which is almost 13 centuries after the fall of Troy.”

“Would you care to tell me about these three unsuccessful times?”

“I wouldn’t call them “unsuccessful”, as such. We just… didn’t do it. Didn’t take that one more step.”

“So, no failed attempts, no erectile dysfunctions or…”

“Oh no, no, definitely not. Nothing like that, Jean. I assure you. No performance anxiety either. It was just…”

“Performance anxiety, you say? Have you been reading about sexual dysfunctions, Aziraphale?”

“Of course I have! I love educating myself. And this seems to be quite a fascinating subject.”

“Indeed. Well, what do you mean by “not taking one more step” then?”

“Well, if you remember, you made an observation about a possible pattern – the healing tendency of our… sexual encounters?”

“Yes.”

“Well. You might have a point there, Jean. I had lived in Carthage before it fell and my partner was involved in politics with Vercingetorix and his tribes, but somehow neither of the events shook us. I took pains not to get attached to any place, particularly a city, after Troy, and the demon was doing his general trickstering, as he sometimes calls it, without actually taking sides. Both times we were there for each other and we got drunk, but… well, there is no better way of saying it than “we didn’t take that one more step.”

“And the 41 AD “close thing” in Rome?”

“Oh, that was completely different.”

“In what way?”

In a way that I am very reluctant to tell her about. That was one of those very rare cases when I allowed myself to be aroused just for the sake of it. Just because it felt good. That was sinful. The sin of lust, pure and simple. I tried to blame it on Petronius’s oysters but I knew I only had my own sensuality to blame. “Can I tempt you to some oysters” – I blush when I recall these words – I regretted them as soon as they parted my lips. I was _flirting_.

“Aziraphale,” Jean breaks into my embarrassing reverie. “Why don’t you think it aloud? It could be quite insightful.”

“I was flirting with him, Jean,” I blurted out. “I allowed myself to fall under his charm… in a sensual, erotic way. I wanted him. I was so ashamed of myself when I realized what I was doing that I cut it short. Rather abruptly.”

“Why were you ashamed of your desire to flirt?”

“Such behaviour was totally inappropriate for an angel.”

“But you said in earlier sessions that you allowed yourself to be aroused and then masturbated thinking of him. Is this appropriate for an angel? To say nothing of the actual sexual intercourse you had with your partner.”

“But this is so different, Jean, don’t you see?”

“I am afraid I don’t. But you seem to be upset – shall we put off discussing this issue as well?”

“Yes, please. I am sorry, Jean.”

“This is absolutely no need to apologise, Aziraphale. You’re doing fine. Would you like to tell me about 79 AD? What happened that year?”

“The eruption of Mount Vesuvius.”

“Ah. I know that one.” She seems pleased, since apparently neither Carthage nor Vercingetorix meant anything to her. “The destruction of Pompeii.”

“Yes, this is the city whose name is remembered. But there were others. Herculaneum, Stabiae, Oplontis, several villages… All of them perished in those horrible days, suffocated and smothered.”

“And you did not take it well?”

“Of course I didn’t, but it was not me, who had a crisis, if that is what you are implying. It was my partner, actually. He didn’t take it well at all.”

It was quite unexpected that Crowley and not me would fall for a city. It was him who warned me against it, after all. But he said Pompeii was so laid-back and fun and he felt good there. Almost at home.

“Look!” he would say. “The good people of Pompeii even have wind chimes with phalluses. Isn’t this a lovely place?”

“The worship of phallic symbols,” I began, “As well as their usage as protective amulets has been widespread since…”

“If you are going to continue with this lecture, angel, you’ll soon find out where demon can stick protective amulets.”

Crowley came to Pompeii around 61 AD, straight after the failure of yet another Celtic revolt against Rome, Boudica’s this time. He said he was going to keep a low profile for a while, lest he was drawn into another doomed rebellion by some enthusiastic but ineffective Celtic tribes. “Bloody embarrassing, those Celts,” he would grumble. “A major design flaw, just like horses.” But I knew he liked them much more than horses. And I was glad Pompeii helped him restore his peace, if a demon could have such a thing as inner peace. I doubted Crowley was even capable of it. So let’s say it was a reprieve.

Only it didn’t work out. In October 79 AD Mount Vesuvius woke up all of a sudden and turned the mellow, sun-kissed, harvest-laden land into living Hell. The volcano spat its molten fury up into the sky and the winds carried it over to Pompeii and the sea, which started to boil. The monstrous, deadly tree grew out of Vesuvius and spilled its rain of stone, ash and gas engulfing the whole area – houses and bridges, temples and statues, vineyards and stables, phallic wind chimes and people who they failed to protect. I saw it with my own eyes as I was standing onboard Pliny’s ship, sailing across the Bay of Naples. Pliny had a friend to rescue and so had I.

It wasn’t hard to rescue him from discorporation – to find him, to persuade him that he couldn’t possibly save all the kids in Pompeii, no, nor all the wind chimes, to drag him to the ship. That was the easy part, although I almost lost my head myself several times. I still remember the crushed pomegranates, ripe and blood red – literally blood red since its juice was missed with the blood of a woman crushed under the white pumice. I’ve never touched this fruit since.

The hard part was rescuing him from the familiar abyss that was opened up in him. He was on the very brink, raving like I had never seen him raving before. God – that was who he was raving at, as violently as only a demon can.

“All right I get it, the Flood. The naughty humans misbehaved – let’s teach them a lesson. War – I get wars. Rebellions, uprisings, conquests, whatever. Bad, bad humans unable to live in peace, they bring all that upon themselves, serves them right…”

“Crowley, darling…”

“Don’t you dare to darling me! You miserable, repulsive sycophant – what are you going to say? It’s _ineffable_? Oh, how nice and proper it sounds in Latin – as all things do. Go on, say it!” He mimicked my voice in a most shockingly realistic manner. “_Better not to speculate. You can’t second-guess ineffability_. Go on, say it.”

“Really, my dear, you are upset…”

“I am what? I am _upset_? Upset?! Gonna shed a measly tear, am I, and then proceed as always – is that it? _The world_ is upset… the world is bloody _screwed_. Totally fucked up – well, I am glad there are all sorts of expressive words in the language of Rome! Hope it will have many descendants so that I can swear in them all.”

“The world is not perfect, yes, but…”

“Not _perfect_, is it? I am surprised you have noticed. Not perfect!! The porridge sometimes gets burnt, deary-deary me. A volcano erupts now and then, a tsunami wipes out an island or two… In-fucking-affable.”

I tried to hold him, but he pushed me away violently and got on the berth, cuddled up in an angry bundle. There were waves on the sea, so the ship swayed and heaved. It was getting dark. We both were not sea-sick but Crowley was definitely world-sick and when he was like that… well… I could not help but slipping into my own abyss as well. It was not the kind of fury that could melt me – not in a good way, anyway. Damn it, he did have a point.

“I mean _why_…” I heard a touch of wetness in his voice now and tried to touch his hand but he pushed me away the second time. “Why creating a world that kills on its own? Just blindly kills – with its elements, fire, earth, winds and water? Just like that – for no reason? Wars, famine, pestilence – not enough for Her? NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU, BLOOD-THIRSTY INEFFABLE MONSTER? NOT HAPPY WITHOUT RIVERS OF LAVA?!”

“Crowley don’t… please…” I was panicking now.

“Why? Why _not_? Tell me – what can She do to me She hasn’t done yet? I can’t fall twice, can I? What have I got to lose? What have I _got_, anyway? Apart from these questions _She _is not so hot on answering.”

“You’ve got me, darling. Right here.”

He paused and looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. I tried for the third time. I went straight for his lips this time, with all the determination I could summon. I was so terrified he would push me away again and I would never dare to approach him again that I was perhaps too eager and desperate with that kiss. I thought I could taste blood – as well as sweat, ash and, oh no, no, not the pomegranate. Or was it my imagination? Anyway, he didn’t push me away this time.

What I actually tell Jean about all this is that my partner was very upset and mad at God. I tell her that I kissed him – a long and poignant kiss that lasted hours – or so it seemed. I tell her my partner simply went limp in my arms then – I thought he would fall asleep, but he didn’t. He let go. He lay down on the berth and asked me to love him, as hard as I could. And I did, as the ship swayed and the darkness swallowed the suffocating, lava-burned, not-perfect world. Well, I don’t tell her the last bit. I just say I made love to him and although it never came up, it was obvious that we were a couple, in every possible sense of the word.

The rain is pouring down when I leave Jean’s house. I run into Otis as I am going out of the front door – he looks distraught, wet and unhappy, casting me only a cursory look. He obviously takes me for one of his mother’s lovers. I don’t dare to mess with his memory as well. I hope this encounter won’t make his ordeal worse, whatever it is.

As I walk back to my BnB, a truck pulls over besides me. A friendly face of a teen-aged girl peeks out of the window.

“Do you want a lift, sir? You look like you could do with one.”

I smile back at her – it’s impossible not to: she seems such a happy creature – and get inside the truck. She talks all the way back, not in an annoying way: quite the contrary. Her conversation is very upbeat, even when she recounts her troubles. Soon I learn all about her cheeky sister, her infuriating Swedish father, her miserable school, her mother who passed away several years ago and whom she misses a lot. Somehow her voice is very melodic and soothing (as with Jean, not a trace of Welsh lilt: not surprising though, what with her Swedish father and a mother who was obviously black). I bless her almost out loud, beaming.

There is something missing this morning though. Perhaps it is the absence of the sight of sunrise. But the fleeting feeling of having missed something is gone when Ola (the girl’s name) drops me off at the BnB, then asks where I am going after that and on learning that to the train station she waits for me to get my things and gives me another lift – she is picking up her father there. I get a brief glimpse of a tall Scandinavian man with piercing blue eyes, thank Ola profusely and board the train to London.

**Comments under the post**

**Sergeant Tattoo**: I know exactly how he felt. I feel world-sick today myself. Can I have an angel please?

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: Can I have one too? For different purposes, obviously: I need one to inspire me – I got behind with my Inktober sketches and lost my drive to do it. I blame you, Sergeant: I found myself doodling eruptions and lava on statues and pomegranates the whole morning. Btw, you have only 4 days to finish your story!

**Sergeant Angel Cake: **I know it’s a-getting closer, Captain, no need to tick so loudly.

**As_Era_Failed: **A berth in a swaying ship is a slight improvement on rocks. Any chance they’ll do in a bed once?


	5. Pull Out the Anchor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This session takes the narrator back to the era when England changed forever. There is something in this story now that strikes a deeper chord with the therapist.   
We also learn more about the narrator's current existence: the anchor he has chosen for himself, as he calls it.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 29**

The Bookshop keeps me busy for the whole week: it appears that a spell of rainy weather in mid-October drives all book-lovers, linguists and literati indoors, urging them to read books, talk books and, unfortunately, buy books. After several customers have asked me what to read in October, I need to replenish my stock of vintage paperbacks of Zelazny and Bradbury. Luckily, there are still a lot of copies of those around. Two days ago I held a book club meeting: we discussed that sad Danish book, _Silence in October_, and I ended up consoling the whole bunch of people who had gone through painful breakups and had nothing but silences in their own Octobers. Yesterday I hosted a _Just William_ night for kids: since the Rebooting of the World the Crompton books have been a constant presence in my bookshop, and they are quite demanding. Also, there will be a creative writing class on Saturday at the community centre, and I think I’ll attend this class as well: my presence tends to inspire people to pour out their miseries in stories and the overall effect is surprisingly therapeutic. Still, I will definitely squeeze in a session with Jean before that.

Bookshop. That’s how I do it these days. There was a long period after Troy when I was avoiding attaching myself to any kind of place, cities in particular, but also temples, palaces or even houses. I was a travelling angel, blessings and miracles performed on the road. There were voyagers, nomads, caravans, wandering performers of all kinds that I travelled with. I did my best, but I could never achieve results that would satisfy me. I had to admit to myself that I needed to work within a place, within a _community_ of some kind. Crowley always does well with travelling: he says trickstering goes hand in hand with running away in a hurry. He is fine with the open seas. I, on the other hand, need an _anchor_.

When I realised that, I started choosing anchors – slowly, carefully, warily even. I was still afraid of that same abyss opening up inside me. Therefore, I chose small communities, preferably secluded or at least occupying a clandestine niche of its own: something that is not likely to attract much attention, but still gave me opportunities to help people. When the times of monasteries came, it was a blessing. And yet, even there, evil and destruction eventually erupted. I still don’t know whether holding Lindisfarne Gospels in my hands just as the talented artist finished them was worth it – because I also remember the horror of the Vikings coming from the sea to raid Lindisfarne.

Still, it was one of better options for me, at least until printing was invented. So, in the year 1070, where my next session with Jean will transport me, I was in a Benedictine nunnery. Romsey Abbey in Hampshire. _My_ _abbey_.

“Excuse me, Aziraphale,” Jean interrupts me when I mention “my abbey” to her, raising her eyebrows “Did you say _nunnery_?”

“That is correct.”

“A _female_ monastery?”

“Yes.”

“And you were its…”

“Its abbess, yes. Mother Æthelfæl. From year 1046 up till the moment about which I am going to tell.”

“So… you were in a _female_ corporation? Didn’t you say you had stopped using it?”

“I did stop – in the second millennium BC. But both my partner and I still had to do it occasionally: he did it, very briefly, in the first century AD and for a longer period in the 21st century. As for me, I kept avoiding it, but with the advent of Christianity and nunneries I thought… well, this is the time to give it another chance.”

It made sense. A secluded place, almost exclusively female, a community which is a perfect anchor and also an institution with vast opportunities to do good. Besides, no one would dare to ogle or harass a distinguished abbess; no one would dare even to think there was a body behind those many-layers robes. Well, almost no one.

Better still, this was my chance to protect so many women from ogling and harassment, to give them sanctuary. The abused, the unhappy, the lost – all of them flocked to my abbey. And what amazing things they did at Romsay, once they were free from their previous lives! So many talents discovered, so many projects realised. The Gospels my nuns illuminated were no worse than those coming from monasteries. And you should have heard sister Wulfthryth sing during Masses!

Jean frowns when I pronounce Saxon names the way I remember them.

“Wilfrida, if it sounds better to your ear.”

“It does!”

“Well, the English language was very different then.”

“Oh, what was the year again?”

“1070 AD.”

“Wasn’t that… Oh yes, 4 years after the Norman Conquest!”

“Precisely. That was what changed English forever. The Norman spoke French and never was a language altered so dramatically as English under the French linguistic domination. But, that is not our subject today, is it?”

“Quite so. Tell about your partner’s arrival. I presume he turned up at the Abbey one day?”

“At the Abbey – yes, just so. _At_ it, but not _inside_. He could not exactly _stroll in_ leisurely, you see.”

“Why is that?”

“Consecrated ground. It hurts demons. Not that it would stop him from entering a church when really necessary, but that night he didn’t feel like trying. It all started right after the Compline, with sister Wilfrida’s cry...”

“Mother Æthelfæl! Mother Æthelfæl!! There is a French gentleman to see you!” Wulfthryth’s shrill voice carried well along Romsay’s vaulted passageways, as she was running along them, screaming. The whole nunnery must have heard her. The whole nunnery must have held its breath.

We had been waiting for something drastic to happen in those years, immediate years after William of Normandy defeated King Harold at Hastings. William the Bastard, William the Conqueror, William the New King of England. The Norman King. Which meant _French_. The English nobility were ousted by the French, as the English language was kicked out of every place that mattered by French. Good Old England, Saxon England, died in October 1066, and the land was rapidly turning into something else entirely. We were living in fear of these changes – expecting them to engulf and drown us.

They started from the top though. English archbishops were the first to go, and then it was bishops’ turn. How long would it take them to banish an English abbess from a remote abbey and substitute her with a French-speaking one? Would they even care for a nunnery or was it too insignificant to notice? By October 1070 there were very few English bishops left in the country, so I was expecting the end of my Benedictine anchor at any day. Was this “French gentleman” the messenger of doom?

“Invite him into the royal parlour,” I told Wulfthryth when she reached my chamber, panting. “I’ll see him there shortly. Really, my child, you should know better than running and screaming like this.”

“He won’t come in, Mother! He says he’ll see you _outside_! Here, he told me to give you this.”

Her eyes were opened wide in horrified anticipation. The Norman Conquest seemed a Doomsday for them all – they were only waiting for the last days to come and prayed fervently, day in, day out. I took the scroll with a fancy seal from her trembling hand and opened it. There were only two words inside. “Guess who”. I looked at the broken seal again – sure enough, it had a serpent rampant on it. Will you be my bringer of Doom _again_, demon, I thought and sighed.

“Now, calm down, sister,” I said soothingly, “It’s all right. The gentleman will talk to me but he will also stay the night. Listen to me carefully: get sister Edyth and sister Edelgytha to go to the gamekeeper’s lodge immediately. They shall clean it and make everything ready for our guest. They shall make sure there’s enough firewood for the hearth, do you understand? Meanwhile, you shall get the good cook to scrape together what she can for the best meal she can conjure and that means the best wine we have in the cellar as well. Do you follow me, sister, or shall I repeat?”

“No, no, I mean yes, yes, I follow, I got all that, I am on my way, Mother!”

“Wonderful, my dear. God be with you.”

“Will they close the nunnery, Mother? Will they turn us all into…”

“Just do as I say, sister. All will be well.”

“Amen! Yes, yes, forgive me, Mother, I am on my way.”

She did go away eventually and sped on to do the errands, while I remained in my chamber gathering my thoughts. I looked at the scroll and the seal again and my heart leapt. I hadn’t seen Crowley for many decades now. Our paths crossed in 1023, didn’t they? We had a very philosophical conversation back then, about Free Will. Yes, in 1014, after the Battle of Clontarf, Crowley spoke of the Arrangement, again, but it was not until 1020 when I finally agreed to it, and then in 1023 we first acted on it, and then went into the metaphysical debate. I suddenly felt such happiness at the prospect of just seeing him, talking to him, listening to his sarcastic comments… that the thoughts of impending doom vanished. I felt the absurd urge to run out of my chamber and shout as loudly as sister Wulfthryth, for the whole nunnery to hear – “he is here, he is come!” But I didn’t, naturally. I was an abbess, after all. I had dignity and standard to uphold. So I waited for as long as I could bear and then left my chamber, in the most dignified manner.

It had been raining all day, but the downpour had stopped by the Compline. There were puddles everywhere and the huge moon was hanging low in October sky, reflected, it seemed, in every one of them. The Hunter’s Moon. “The Gentleman is already in the lodge,” said sister Edyth, who was returning after completing her tasks, sister Edelgytha walking beside her, carrying something. “All has been done that you asked, Mother.”

“Thank you, my child.”

I saw it was a sinister-looking cat in sister Edelgytha’s arms.

“I got Gabryell to comb the lodge for mice and rats, Mother. A miracle-worker, my ole Gabryell, when it comes to them little bastards.”

“Language, sister! But thank you for your thoughtfulness. I do hope you haven’t bothered our guest.”

“Nah, he said he’d personally kill the ones Gabryell missed – which I doubt he did. I mean I doubt Gabryell missed any, that is, not that the posh gent is capable of killing them hisself. He’s a mean one, by the looks of him.”

Sister Edyth crossed herself quickly, while sister Edelgytha grinned and mumbled something to her cat.

“Very well then, sisters. Good night and amen.”

I was glad there was at least one nun in Romsey who wasn’t sick with worry. As long as she had her cat, sister Edelgytha didn’t care about the King of England and all his men. To be honest, at that moment, I didn’t, either. Only one of them. I walked on to the lodge, mindless of the puddles under my feet, trying not to run.

I pushed the door open and there he was. Lounging in a chair, back to the blazing fire in the hearth, feet in black boots up on a wooden bench. A goblet of wine in his hand. A smirk on his face. I felt overwhelmed, stunned, exultant. I came up to him and hugged him, just like that. His smirk disappeared for an instant – he didn’t expect that – but then resurfaced quickly.

“Did you miss me then?”

“Yes.” I replied still holding him.

“Well. Right. You’d better let go because I bring no happy news to the abbess of Romsey Nunnery. Nor am I a happy demon because I had to ride a _horse _to get here. For someone’s sake, let go of me, angel. Let me have a good look at you!”

I reluctantly let go and stepped away. Immediately I became self-conscious and insecure. I had been here for twenty years and I added a few signs of age, to be on the safe side. I was never quite young in my corporations anyway: always an average middle-aged body, but when I was spending a long time in the same community, I always added a wrinkle here and there, a bit of flesh, that kind of thing. In the current female corporation I had quite large breasts – not like those Crowley’s priestess used to have ages ago – those were small, firm and pointed. Mine had a bit of a sag. The robes were not flattering either. I looked at Crowley staring at me. Would he mind? Did he even care?

I don’t relate much of this to Jean, but I do mention my insecurities about the corporation.

“Were your female corporeal peculiarities your own choice?”

“Of course. All of them have always been consciously chosen by me.”

“And your reasons for looking the way you did then were…?”

“Well, to look the part, obviously. The abbess, I mean. The way I thought a true abbess should look – to have the necessary authority and, you know, the general credibility. Just like the demon when he was priestessing.”

“So, the thought of making your body attractive to your partner never crossed your mind until that meeting?”

“I… don’t think so.”

“Why would you say that was the case? Because the abbess’s credibility was more important?”

I hesitate. Was it the case? No.

“No, Jean, it wasn’t that at all. I suppose that, deep down, I was confident I would be attractive to him anyway.”

“I see. So, back to the moment he looked at you and you felt insecure. If you had known that, deep down, why would you feel that way?”

“Isn’t it… isn’t it the essence of love? This very doubt. This existential uncertainty. I know he loves me – but what if he doesn’t? What if something’s changed? What if something’s wrong with me? I know, but I _don’t_ know. I know, but I can _never_ know, not really. And corporeality is just one of the channels these thoughts can run through.”

“So…” Jean says slowly, and with the degree of bitterness I don’t want her to feel in her mellow half-sleep. “So, even angels have _that_. Immortal, free from disease and capable of having any body at all. What chance is there for us, humans, then?”

“No, Jean, no, _please_ – don’t think that. Buck up, Jean, dear. It isn’t that bad. And it’s not hopeless in any case, angelic or human.”

She smiles vaguely – I am not sure if I managed to get through.

“Let’s assume you’re right Aziraphale, otherwise, what am I doing trying to help people when there is no help. So, what happened next?”

I searched his eyes but they were inscrutable. I wasn’t at all reassured but I occupied myself fidgeting with food and wine, while he was still watching me, silently. I had a sip of wine – that was very good, the best vintage we had in all these years – and then nearly jumped when Crowley said:

“I am King William’s courtier now. Not for long I hope, but still. He wants to lay his hands on… well, on everything, really, that it is possible to lay hands on in this land. Funny, isn’t?”

“What is?”

“Me being on his side and you representing the Saxon England.”

“What amuses you about it?”

“Well, if I remember correctly, in the 7th century you sided with King Arthur. Sir Aziraphale of the Round Table, eh? While I was with the Saxons whom _you_ called invaders and strived to protect the land _against_ them. And now you’ll tell me to leave this land for the Saxons.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“Come on, angel. Spill it out.”

“If you insist, you are siding with the _invaders_, again. The Saxons have lived in this land for centuries now. It is _their_ land. English is _their_ language. You come with sword, fire and French.”

“Aha. _English_, yes. What was your English name again?”

“Mother Æthelfæl.”

“You see! A bit of French is exactly what this land and this language needs!”

We spoke Latin that night – as we had been doing for more than a thousand years now. Five more centuries would pass before we would finally switch into English – Early Modern English, the way Shakespeare spoke it. But that was too still far off from the moonlit October night in a ramshackle lodge in Hampshire. And Latin is very conducive to long disputes about politics and linguistics, so we argued and drank, drank and argued. There was no need to recount all that to Jean, so I didn’t.

“Now listen, Mother Ath… Alth…”

“Æthelfæl.” I was standing by the window at that moment looking at the moon, floating among the rags of scattered clouds.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Listen. I just wanted you to admit that… Bless me, what was it I wanted you to admit?”

“You were saying something about the… inter…. intra… intrinsic benefits of bilinguism.”

“Gosh, was I? What’s bilinguism?”

“Weren’t you referring to your forked tongue?”

“No, no… stupid angel, are you having me on? Anyway, I have been wondering…”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been… wondering about…”

He got up suddenly, although a bit shakily, and was behind me in a second. I felt his arms around me.

“I’ve been _really_ wondering… whether you _really_ have a _really_ female body under those robes.”

“Of course.”

“All those things… you showed me at Stonehenge – how long ago? Three thousand years?”

“3184.”

“No kidding? Anyway… those things. D’you… do you wanna me… try them on you?”

“Do you even remember any of… _Oh_.”

I felt his hand getting under my robes and sliding up my leg. I turned round and kissed him and as I did it, his hand got entangled in the layers of fabric, losing its way. He tore his lips from mine, hissed an obscenity and snapped his fingers. My robes fell in a heap on the floor. He looked at me again and I felt the same insecurity in spite of drunkenness. In fact, I felt I sobered up abruptly.

His gaze was not inscrutable though. The same yellow eyes were drawing me in as those that I saw when we clang to each other on the slopes of the Tibetan Mountains after the Flood. The same eyes that reflected a thousand stars during the short Solstice Night. The same gaze that pierced me with its tenderness on top of a huge rock in a winding canyon. The same intensity that swayed with us on a ship in the bay of Naples. The existential uncertainty melted and disappeared without trace under this gaze. His hand resumed his quest.

“No hymen, angel?” he asked after a while in a husky voice.

“Alas, no.”

“Naughty abbess. Now where was that little spot that… _aha_… judging by these sounds I found it. I knew I would… Hey! Someone needs to lie down, it seems to me…”

Thousands of moon-filled puddles exploded around me then and intertwined in a spinning wheel. They exploded again and again… and his hands gave way to his lips, to his tongue – _bilinguism. Did you say? It has its inter-intra-intrinsic benefits, after all_ – finally, to his cock (I use the word “penis” when Jean asks about specifics, but in my head it is “cock”, in Crowley’s voice. That is exactly the word he would have used. When we started using English, he praised it for the number of useful synonyms. He said it could even beat the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii).

Well, his cock, which I, of course, had already been familiar with, was a revelation, and not a linguistic one. Every sensation was fresh that night, and love, invented long ago, was reinvented, again and again, until the puddles transformed into an ocean of transparent, shimmering moonlight. The night, which was theoretically longer than the Solstice night, somehow felt even shorter.

I am a bit anxious that what I am telling today continues to have a strange effect on Jean. She looks sad and a bit distracted. The house is full of morning sounds again – all the usual rustles and whispers, Otis walking around upstairs, incessant rain outside. There was also rain again in the morning, that October morning of 1070.

“Listen, angel,” Crowley was saying between our parting kisses. “I can buy you more time if you like it here so much. Ten, even twenty years, easily. I can arrange things for you… or you can leave and come back after a year or two as a new French abbess, Mother Matilda or something palatable like this.”

“Thank you, dear. It is so kind of you,” I was hiding my face in his hair which was long then, inhaling his smell to carry around with me, in my memory, for the next millennium.

“I’ll do it then.”

“No. Please, do not take this risk – whatever you might be risking on my account.”

“What utter balderdash!”

“No, seriously, dear. It’s time for me to pull out the anchor.”

“What? Is that a synonym for “cock” or something?”

“No dear,” I smiled. “I mean it’s time for me to move on.”

“Sure about it? Seems a good place for you to be.”

“It is. But I’ll find another. I was getting too attached to it, anyway.”

The final kiss was so long I thought Crowley was going to reverse time and start the night all over again. It takes all my concentration to gently push the memory out of my mind and surface again.

“Well, Aziraphale,” Jean says with some heaviness in her voice. “We are running out of millennia, so I suppose there is only one more story to tell.”

“Quite so. Do you have any ideas about me and my partner so far?”

“A couple. But I’ll have to listen to the final installment first.”

“Do you think we have a power dynamic issue?”

“In all my years in the profession, Aziraphale, I haven’t met a couple who didn’t have this issue.”

“Oh. Right. Anyway, we’ll surely talk about it all in our next sessions.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Which, I hope will happen quite soon.”

“Certainly, Aziraphale,” Jean says, her usual professional reassuring tone sounding just a fraction off key.

I rise from the armchair, feeling like I need to mend something, but I am not sure what. I feel anxious and suddenly insecure again, as I step outside, into the rain.

**Comments under the post**

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: Anchors are good. Never seem to find a proper one for myself, though (don’t offer nunneries, please).

**Sergeant Tattoo**: Whoa… I am a bilingual myself (and of course you are one, too, Sergeant), but I’ll never be able to say that word again with a straight face.

**As_Era_Failed: “**Someone needs to lie down” – lie down _where_? Was there a _bed_ in the lodge?? Did they finally do it in an actual bed?!


	6. Extreme Balancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The narrator relates the story of his last sexual encounter with his partner and gets his therapist opinion about his case. He is not quite ready to think about it but he intends to start as soon as possible.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 29**

Fogs have settled over this sceptred isle.

They are all different, these October fogs: each place has its own, its unique fog. London fogs are quite hip (I’ve learnt this word from Crowley because he says “nifty” is just as bad as “be-bop”. He doesn’t know it’s still “dandy” in my head). They roll over the city leisurely, in a suave, urbane way, rendering the streets and buildings not so much mysterious as chic. In the fog, the tower of Big Ben looks almost itself again – all the scaffolding is barely visible and the big luminary face of the clock is smiling benevolently from up there. They say it will take two more years to finish the renovation, but in the fog you are back in the days of its glory. I can almost hear the low sonorous voice of its bell.

Fogs in Wales are primal. They slither into the valley where Jean’s house stands and turn it into one big pool of swirling silence. You half expect a Celtic priestess step out of the fog with a sacrificial scythe in her hand. I think I actually hear someone following me, but as I turn around, there is no one. Except the fog itself – herself? There is a personality to it. For a moment I feel like praying to Mater Nostra – isn’t she the Foggiest One of them all, the ineffable, inscrutable Mother of all being hiding in the fogs of eternity? The moment is gone though, since I have already arrived. I ask the door to let me in and it obliges with a gentle squeak. The muffled noises of Jean’s house engulf me.

There is a cloud of inscrutability around Jean in her foggy half-sleep today. The yellow of her robe looks particularly sunny on a morning like this, even irrelevantly so. Irreverently, even. No, I should get out of this ineffable train of thought. And yet it is hard, considering where my final piece of our sexual history will take me. At least, Jean doesn’t look morose anymore, and her notes and diagrams are back on her lap. The sight of them is strangely calming.

“So, Aziraphale,” she opens the session looking at the charts she has drawn. “When did your last sexual intercourse happen? In the 21st century I presume?”

“Yes, 948 years after the Romsay night.”

“That would be…” she calculates in her head. “2018?”

“Yes, one year ago. Well, one year and several months. It was in the summer of 2018, just after the Apocalypse that we averted. The same very night.”

“The Apocalypse?”

“You probably remember it as a spell of exceptionally bad weather and precipitous escalation of international tension.”

“Yeees, that rings a bell,” she says with uncertainty. How quickly humans forget. Sometimes I envy their ability to black out anything as long as they are not personally traumatised by it. “So, just a year ago, Aziraphale? In human terms that would be… about half an hour ago. Does it feel the same way to you?”

Does it? Am I still living in some sort of aftermath, still feeling his body intertwined with mine?

In a way, I am. And the way our corporations intertwined that night… I am not even sure we could disentangle completely after that and become separate again. Is this why I feel I can’t wait for another millennium for us to unite again?

We were extremely tired that night. Exhausted beyond angelic or demonic limit – physically and spiritually. It had been the day the world might have ended, but just as Cassandra had predicted all those centuries ago, we both disobeyed and it made all the difference. I can’t tell you how metaphysically tiring disobeying of this order is. But there we were in Crowley’s flat, a bit drunk after a bottle of wine consumed on a bus-stop in Tadfield, with another prophesy on our hands. This time it was Agnes Nutter’s – and just as Cassandra she had proved that she generally tended to be right. We had to find a way of “choosing our faces wisely.”

We were just lying on Crowley’s bed, Crowley on his back, me on my side, my face buried in the curve of his neck, our hands locked in a firm grip. We had both agreed our respective sides would try to destroy us as soon as they could. It was not hard to figure out the methods they would use. We both knew we would make love that night – for what would probably be the very last time, unless…

“The only way to interpret the prophesy is that we need to wear each other’s face,” I stated the obvious. The demon just nodded. He was deep in thought.

“Of course, I can transform my body in any way, as you can yours… We can assume each other’s semblances. They will take a lot of effort to maintain and it will be even harder to act naturally, but it’s possible.”

“Wouldn’t work. They’ll see through it straight away – the auras.”

“Well then. What are your ideas? How to change faces but keep the auras? Is it even possible?”

Surprisingly, rather than answering, he turned his head and kissed me on the forehead.

“How was it, inside that woman’s, what’s her name, body, you naughty possessor of the innocent mortals?”

“Leaving aside the question of Madame Tracy’s innocence…”

“Yes, let’s leave it aside.”

“…I wouldn’t say I was in Marjorie’s _body_. That is her actual name, by the way, and she is such a sweet…

“Shall we leave her sweetness in the same place as her innocence?”

“As you wish. So, I was in her _mind_, rather. More or less.”

“So, her aura was her own?”

“So I gathered. But you’re the one to answer that. You knew me at once, as soon as you got out of that flaming car…”

“Don’t remind me…”

“Well, you’ll _have_ to go back to that moment, dear. What did you see, when you looked at Marjorie in that moment? How did you know?”

“I just _knew_. I’d know you anywhere, in any guise. I just know you’re _here_ – when I am within a mile of you. More even. Don’t you feel _my_ presence?”

“I don’t think I do, dear, sorry. Not in the way you seem to feel mine. But going back to Marjorie. You didn’t see my aura?”

“Not big on auras, me. But no, I don’t think there was much to spot – until you started speaking, that is. That was a big giveaway. But I had known before you opened her mouth.”

“So…”

“So…”

“We’ll have to possess each other simultaneously?” I said out loud what we were both thinking.

The demon’s hands were on my face now, caressing it with his long fingers.

“So you don’t think we’ll explode or something as you once said?” he asked gently.

“No. And I didn’t think we would, when I said it then. I just wasn’t ready to try to possess you.”

“Ready _now_?” he whispered, tracing the lines on my forehead.

“I think I am,” I answered, sensing every little touch of his fingertips and savouring them.

“Still wouldn’t work,” he said with a sigh. “If you’re all gone, what will generate this aura of goodness? Your bloody sweet holiness?”

“_You_ will, my love. There is goodness in you, deep down. No, not even that deep. As you possess my corporation, you should bring that up on the surface.”

“How will this be different from us transforming our own bodies then?”

“It will be different in every way that matters!”

Somehow we both knew it would be the case. Crowley’s fingers were on my lips, tracing their outline.

“Besides, there will be our residual auras still attached to the bodies, I believe.”

As I said this with the demon’s fingers on my lips, every word felt like tasting music.

“Residual auras, you say?” he asked slowly.

“Well, something like it. The main thing will be to attach your own self to it and… well, _generate_.”

“Easier said than done.”

“You _can_ do it,” I said and started kissing his fingers because I could no longer resist it. We were silent for a long while. I felt my tiredness receding a bit and arousal beginning. I knew Crowley was going through the same sensation – it was like one common wave.

“And you, obviously being a bastard deep down – or not so deep, can also project this badness around?” he asked, pushing me on my back and getting on top of me, with sudden intensity. A snap of fingers – and we were naked. “Well, _can_ you?”

While I was looking inside my soul, searching for an answer, he was caressing me, becoming more and more demanding and passionate. Before I completely gave up on thinking, I realised he was preparing us both for a position we had discovered during our first time. We had worked it out in our shared cloud of golden sparks – a position that required extreme balancing from both: since one would be lying on his back, the other, the top one, also being a receiver, would have to spread his wings so as to make it physically possible. The bottom one would have to do most of the hip work but also hold the other’s wrists for extra balance. I borrow one of Jean’s sheets to make a quick sketch to show her how it works. She looks quite impressed. The point is – the recipient is on top and balances with wings, which makes him active in spite of the seemingly passive role, while the bottom one has to surrender without losing his dominant role. It is quite poetical, and I point out to Jean that it can be a perfect illustration of complex power-dynamic issues. She says she’ll teach a class on it one day.

As Crowley was getting into the top-balancing position, he moaned a little as I slipped into him and then spread his black wings with a swish, saying:

“I hope you are in touch with your inner bastard. Because I am going to possess you. And you – me.”

“You mean – now? Like _this_?” I gasped through pleasure, desire and panic all welded into one.

“Yes, like this. Do you think… there will… ever… be… a better moment? I am... being… most receptive… are you ready?”

In a sort of delirious shock I felt myself nod.

“NOW!”

That abandonment I had once felt… I caught it and rode it like a storm now and left my own corporation. We met somewhere in between – the moment of intertwining, a friction of soul upon soul, electric discharge, a cloud of sparks splitting both ways and then I was the one on top, I was the one with my partner inside me, I was the one with huge, jet-back wings quivering behind my back, losing balance for a moment and then recapturing it again – with the help of my lover’s hands on my wrists.

My partner was looking at me, wide-eyed, mouth open, not breathing. The eyes were piercing blue. His blond curls were plastered with sweat. I found my voice. Well, I found someone’s voice and used it.

“Breathe,” I said and speaking with this voice was like exhaling fire. I repeated, commanding now. “Breathe, you stupid angel. And move, for someone’s sake.”

He did.

After a while, a long, sweetly weird, mind-blowing, soul-crushing, world-changing, painfully blissful while, when I licked my lips, between moans and screams, I discovered my tongue was forked. I smirked. Yes, actually _smirked_ – that’s what you do if you have a forked tongue. The extreme-balance position didn’t allow for kissing, but there were other positions that we knew well. Time to change. I was going to _use_ that forked tongue of mine, while I had it.

“I think,” the demonagel whispered when the dawn was breaking and the day of our execution was upon us. “I think… we might… just… pull it off.”

“Uh-huh,” the angeldemon agreed. “Lesdoit. Cud do wi’ smicecream first.”

“Wha?”

“I said… I could do… with some ice-cream.”

And the other burst out laughing – the laughter that went on and on and was neither angelic nor demonic, but cosmic, and I hear the echoes of it to this day.

Yes, I am still in the aftermath of that night.

Jean remains silent for a minute or two after I finish my story. Then she leans backwards and puts her hands together, fingers touching her chin. A gesture of superiority… or prayer? Hers is something in between. She starts speaking.

“Well. I thought I had a fairly complete picture of what was going on with you and your partner, Aziraphale, but I must confess this last bit threw me off.”

“Well, I suppose it was a tad unusual, our last time together.”

“A tad? I don’t think it fits into any category whatsoever.”

“Can we perhaps do without categories then?”

“I suppose we have to.”

“Can you just share whatever thoughts you have so far, Jean?”

She sighs.

“Let’s treat them as preliminary conclusions only.”

“By all means. I hope it’s not our last session.”

“Well, that depends.”

I am surprised to hear this.

“Depends on what, Jean?”

“On whether you can persuade your partner to join us, naturally. Among many challenges that your case presents, there is only one thing that is crystal clear. If you want to succeed, you need to talk to your partner about it. And continue together – in a couple therapy. Does he know you have been doing therapy?”

I shake my head, unable to speak. How could I possibly tell him?

“So far, several tendencies can be traced in your sexual relationship. You do not separate love and sex, to begin with. In a case like this, it is doubtful that having “more sex” is what you actually want.”

I take it in silently. Just taking in – I’ll think about it later.

“Secondly, your sexual experiences tend to be tied up to apocalyptic events and existential crises in both of you. It seems that only these situations justify the act for you. Otherwise, you might be ashamed to engage in it. Your comment about flirting was very revealing.”

“Are you saying that I should flirt with… my partner?” I ask horrified.

“It might be beneficial. Unless you prefer to wait till the next apocalypse or major war that would make it all right for you. But then again, it’s hard to say for sure without your partner’s perspective on it. Until we know what is it that he wants and needs, we cannot even begin to decide on a course of action.”

“I see,” I murmur. I shouldn’t have been that surprised – of course Jean had a point. It should have been a couple therapy right from the start. But… even to mention this to Crowley? No… _No_.

“Thirdly, although you seemed to have had satisfying sexual encounters each time you engaged in intercourse, there is still a lot lacking. Intimacy, everyday bodily contact…”

“We couldn’t, could we? We had to keep our distance, had to avoid even so much as hand-holding all these millennia. Well, up to the Non-Apocalypse, anyway.”

“And after it? Did you start hand-holding?”

“No,” I have to admit.

“I see. You might benefit from sensate therapy in that case, scheduled sex or any number of things, but once again, we can’t know this until we know what your partner thinks and feels.”

“I doubt very much he will be willing to participate in a couple therapy,” I confess at last. “I am so sorry, Jean.”

“No need to be. Whether he is willing or not to see a therapist, I hope he’ll at least talk to you about it all. Talk to him, Aziraphale. This is the only way forward.”

The sketch I did for her is on top of her papers. If she is going to teach a class on that, she’ll need a medium in it as well. What _I_ need is some thinking space. Luckily, I have a long walk back and then a train ride in the fog. Fog seems a perfect place to be right now.

“Thank you so much, Jean,” I say as I rise and take my leave. I feel her looking at me as I head towards the door and I muster all my angel powers to make her awakening particularly sweet this morning. I also spread whatever I can towards Otis somewhere up there. Then I step into the fog.

**Comments under the post**

**Sergeant Tattoo**: I hoped there would be something like that during their last night (well, latest – hopefully not last). A bit spooky though. I’d totally freak out, having sex with myself like this. And yet I can’t stop thinking about it now. What have you done to my brain?

**As_Era_Failed: **Definitely a bed this time! Hallelujah! Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: Is this it? Feels like it’s not quite the end.

**Sergeant Angel Cake**: It isn’t the end, no. There is one more piece. And no worries, Captain: you’ll have it right for Halloween.


	7. Artistic Purposes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halloween is coming and the narrator asks his partner to help him with pumpkin carving. It is a chance for him to have the conversation that he is afraid of having. But, perhaps, artistic endeavours will help him along.

**Posted by Sergeant Angel Cake on October 31**

London fogs have taken out all the stops for the end of October. They are more sinister than hip now, although still as suave as they can be, especially around street lights in parks. I think of light installations that turned Berkeley Square into a magic wood a year ago but somehow I never pass the place in my strolls this year. At least St. James’s Park is part of my today’s route, with its fog embracing the Royal Horseguards and turning the place into something almost ethereal. Ducks are as real as always though, getting realer and realer each year, so it seems. I throw them some Milo seeds – I’ve read it’s much healthier for them than bread. They make a lot of noise but I still discern the familiar sounds of footsteps above the racket. Here he is, more stylish than any fog can ever hope to be, wearing a black coat with a red collar. I still remember how tight it felt and yet how his clothes just made you smirk and swing your hips, just because, what the hell, you are the coolest thing in this town.

“What’s that you’re feeding to the poor buggers?”

“Milo seeds.”

“Are they on diet or something?”

“It’s healthier.”

“Oh go on. Let them live a little.”

With this he tosses something looking suspiciously like a crêpe into the pond. When the rackets subsides, he turns to me, his eyes concealed behind his shades, and asks nonchalantly.

“Any particular plans for tomorrow? How about the Ritz? Seems quite the weather for it.”

“Which weather is not for the Ritz?”

“Good point. Still. Can I tempt you to…”

“I am so sorry, but I will be busy.”

“Busy doing…?”

“Pumpkins.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s Halloween on Thursday, and I will be hosting a party for kids at the shop.”

“Will you now?”

“It’s the books, you see. I told you about it. _Just William_. They kind of… insist on my interacting with children more often. 11-year-olds especially.”

“They bully you, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Anyway, could you perhaps… help me with pumpkin carving?”

“Why don’t you just miracle the bloody things? Or are you feeling like sticking a knife into something, angel? The bastard in you is getting restless?”

“I just want a quiet evening. Some time for contemplation. Perhaps a quiet conversation, too, if you would care to join me.”

“Sticking knives into pumpkins sounds good, actually. I could try that. Not so sure about contemplation and what was the other thing?”

“A quiet conversation.”

“That’s the one. How quiet are we talking here? Not whispering I hope?”

“You can be as loud as you like, Crowley.”

“Fine then. Round six?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Sharpen your knives, angel.”

With that he saunters away, the fog slithering obsequiously out of his way. I follow his silhouette with my eyes until it dissolves completely, wondering if I can muster the courage to steer the quiet conversation to what Jean wants us to discuss. Probably not. But what if I just try flirting? Perhaps it will work and we won’t have to go through all the embarrassing talking and couple therapy.

I still haven’t started thinking about some of the things Jean said. I don’t have the time: I have this kid party to organise, all these pumpkins to carve…

Next day the fog thickens to the pea soup consistency. I don’t get a lot of customers and the shop is feeling a bit drowsy. I have five large pumpkins delivered – I tip the handsome delivery man generously and arrange them on a long table I have placed in the open circular space in the middle of the shop. I dim the lights, then turn them all on again, then turn them off completely and light several candles.

Needless to say, I feel exceptionally silly, doing all that. But no need to tell this to myself – when Crowley arrives, he will surely tell me all about it.

Flirt with him, that is what I’ll try doing. _Flirt_. Right.

Flirt with _Crowley_.

It feels easier to find a place on Earth where a tsunami or an earthquake is happening right now and drag him there than sit here in the candlelit bookshop and attempt to flirt. Oh my God, here he comes.

The shop lets him in cheerfully: it has taken a shine to the demon. Crowley looks surprisingly casual tonight: as he pulls the coat off, there’s an old T-shirt underneath, with gothic letters forming the word “Geronimo”. He smirks as he takes it all in – the candles, the table and the pumpkins, but says nothing. Then he takes his shades off, picks up one of the knives I laid out and stabs it into one of the pumpkins, making me wince.

“What do you have in mind?” I ask him. “Nothing too scary, I hope? There will be kids here after all.”

“These kids watch films that would make you faint, angel. And even worse cartoons. Check out _Happy Tree Friends_ one of these days. Though, on second thought, no, don’t _ever_ check it out.”

I want to say something flirty but my mind is blank, so I start working on my own pumpkin. I have something very special in mind. I get a crayon and start applying the pattern I have designed for this occasion carefully. When I am only half done with this task, Crowley is already finishing his first pumpkin.

“Isn’t that…?”

“Hastur, yes. That’s a face that brings back memories, isn’t it? What are you doing?”

“You’ll see when I’m done.”

I keep applying the intricate pattern, while Crowley moves onto his second pumpkin. I am still considering possible ways to start flirting. The smell of pumpkin is permeating the shop, and Hastur-Jack is now blazing, provided with its own candle. The effect is quite spooky and I wonder whether all this was such a good idea.

“Do you happen to have some fake flies in the shop, angel?

“I can’t abide live or fake ones in here, Crowley.”

“Don’t you love all God’s creatures, great or small?”

“I do, with all my heart, just not in my bookshop. Anyway, is this one going to be Beelzebub?”

“Spot on. I’m on the roll. Well, I’ll have to conjure some up.”

“Although…” I say, struck with an idea, “Although, I think there is one in your ear.”

“One what?!”

“A fake fly, of course.” I reply, miracling one furtively and then performing a magician’s trick to get it out of the demon’s ear. I’ve been practicing my magic for the Halloween party. I am trying to do it all _flirtingly_ now.

Crowley groans and puts his head down to the table, the knife stuck in Beelzebub’s head. I am hopeless with flirting, I have to admit.

“I’ll just make some cocoa for us, shall I?” I say quickly and escape to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I hear him saying from the room. “Add brandy into mine. Or better still, add some cocoa into my brandy.”

When I come back some time later, Beelzebub-Jack is blazing next to Hastur-Jack, a big-eyed fly perching on her head. The fly’s eyes are glowing red. I place the brandy next to Crowley. I didn’t dare to add any cocoa into it. He seems to be working on the third pumpkin fiercely. I sip my cocoa, burn my tongue and then finally finish applying the pattern.

While I was in the kitchen, I used the old computer I keep in there for looking up recipes and googled some tips on flirting. One of them was “compliment the other person early in the conversation.” This I can do, I suppose. And it is still early in the conversation since we’ve hardly had any.

“You have a talent for pumpkin carving, Crowley,” I say rather self-consciously. “I never knew you had it in you. Very artistic.”

He casts a quick glance at me and goes back to his work. I notice that he is putting all the seeds and pumpkin insides on a plate rather than tossing it into the bin next to the table.

“What are you keeping those for?”

“Artistic purposes. As we talented artists do.”

“Oh. Can’t wait to see what you’ll make of them.”

He grinned.

“You’ll enjoy it.”

“Now that sounds ominous.”

“You bet.”

_Keep your interactions short and sweet_, was the next tip I read in the kitchen. Well, that was short, sure enough. Was it sweet? Erm… Sweet… _ish_. It will have to do for now. I really need to apply myself to the pumpkin if I want it done. The knife slips as I am making a hole in the thick skin. It cuts my thumb.

“Carving fingers now?”

“Just a scratch,” I reply and heal it immediately. Then I think I should have asked Crowley to heal it, but it’s too late. Another flirtatious opportunity is gone. Besides, he seems very engrossed in his project. I can see it is going to be Dagon. I make another cut in the pumpkin skin. More carefully this time. Then another. After a dozen more cuts I begin to get the hang of it and actually enjoy the process. Meanwhile, Dagon-Jack joins the other two. It has a snarl that boasts an impressive array of teeth. Crowley makes a large swig of his brandy.

“Are you slacking on purpose, angel? Want me to do all the work?”

“No! Of course not! I am just not as quick as you are. But I am getting there.”

“Well, I need this last pumpkin for my big artistic endeavour, anyway.”

Whatever it is he is doing with the fourth pumpkin, it is a very creative process that requires a lot of messing around, cursing and quaffing of brandy. From time to time he drops his knife dramatically and attacks the pumpkin with his nails – I notice they are long and sharp – I have never seen them like this before. At times I forget about my own pumpkin, mesmerised by Crowley’s maneuvers. _Be bold_, said another tip. Apparently, these tips were not tailored to angels entranced by a cursing demon violently (but artistically) plunging his nails into a pumpkin.

“You are the most amazing creature in this universe, Crowley,” I say when he picks up his knife again.

“Ouch!”

He puts a finger in his mouth and glares at me accusingly. Then he says this:

“Are you flirting with me or something?”

Right. Now I am utterly mortified.

“I am so sorry, Crowley. I’ll just do my pumpkin.”

There is silence for a while as we both work, the smell of pumpkin becoming the new fog. I find my way through it, I put my mortification and yearning into my carving. I use several different tools apart from my knife, I make a curve and then another, I scrape the inside of a curve and then another, and then a dozen more, and then another dozen, until the pattern flashes out and drags me on through the process as if it had the will of its own. It is quite relaxing actually, as well as fulfilling. By the time it’s done I’m almost calm.

Crowley’s Jack is also finished. It’s horrible in a fascinating way but I can’t understand what it is exactly. It’s like someone’s face, melting. All the seeds and pumpkin insides form a kind of foam on it.

“What is it, Crowley?”

“Ligur. As I saw him last – burned away in the shower of holy water.”

I feel existential dread enveloping me, making me almost sick.

“See?” Crowley says. “You’re soft. Stay away from _Happy Tree Friends_.”

But all I can think of is that _this_ could have happened to Crowley. I feel dizzy and light-headed. Then I get a grip on myself and put a candle inside my own Jack.

“And what in heaven is this? A Celtic pattern, okay, I get it, but what’s the whole thing supposed to be? Some kind of cooking pan?”

“It’s… I tried to… well, it’s… the Holy Grail.”

There is silence. Crowley stares at the Grail. It doesn’t take him long to see what the pattern is actually made of. It’s not just Celtic knotwork. It’s snakes, weaving in and out of those knots, forming them with their long bodies. Multiple intertwined repetitions of the design of his own tattoo.

“Angel…” he starts but he doesn’t go on. Have I rendered him speechless for once?

The candle inside the Grail is burning brighter now and the effect the knotwork of light and shadow is producing is stunning. Enlarged clusters of the intertwined serpents immerse the whole bookshop in their flickering dance. The four Jacks stand as silent sentinels to this miracle. After a long, eloquent pause Crowley speaks at last, breaking the shadow-filled silence.

“Four Demons and the Holy Grail. Quite a title, eh?”

“Indeed. I’d read a novel with that title.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a Monty Python film. But whatever you say, angel, a novel’s fine.”

He sounds subdued, somehow.

“Anyway,” Crowley says, looking away from me, casually. “You can flirt with me, if you like, angel. I don’t mind. Or… we could simply fuck.”

Mortification floods back and turns to consternation. I freeze. Then my mind starts racing. I think back to the sessions with Jean, the noises, the whispers, the rustles, the sensation of presence, the feeling of something missing when I got a lift from Ola. So this is what his invisible presence feels like, when he doesn’t want me to know he is there. He has been…

“Have you been following me, Crowley? When I was going to Wales?”

“From the very first session, obviously. Did you think I would let you have all the fun?”

I put my head down into my folded arms on the table. Turn me into the sixth pumpkin, someone.

“And what fun it was!” the demon continues relentlessly. “That sketch was particularly good. I stole it to put it up on the wall next to the Mona Lisa.”

Burn me in hellfire, please.

“So rather than talking to me, as your therapist urged you, you decided to go for flirting, eh? I must say your flirtation skills are not up to scratch. Ligur’s lizard was better at chatting people up.”

“Crowley, please…”

“What would your next move be? Hmm, what was it – sensate therapy, scheduled sex? That sounds promising. Let me see… I am free in middle of the next century. Are you available, say, in February 2150?”

I do not attempt to reply. I had this coming, so endure this I must.

“By the way, I cursed that silly tap you blessed.”

“Why?” I whisper.

“I dunno. Out of spite? Demons don’t need reasons.”

Then something clicks in my brain. Jean, Otis, tap, Ola, her Swedish dad who happens to be a Jack of all trades, fixing stuff other people break. These two families should get together – complement each other, heal and unite. The cursing of the tap was a blessing in disguise. It is clear as day. As a sunny day on the walls of Troy. I’ll do it what I need to do to bring it about when I get back there. But right now…

_Be bold_. Bold as Hector and come what may. What is there to lose?

“Will you go into couples therapy with me, Crowley?”

That is when he gets serious. Another scary thing to witness. But I am being bold.

“No need, Aziraphale. I’ve got it all sussed. I’ve been thinking a lot this October.”

“Really? And…?”

“And it’s quite simple, really. Just as Jean said – we do it when life gets too apocalyptic. Like, really unbearable. But she’s wrong about “justifying”. We don’t need to justify it to ourselves. We need the effect it has on us – we need it to last. That is all.”

“I am not sure I follow.”

“Listen, angel. We do not need to separate sex and love: one is just the material manifestation of the other, whatever, not the point. The point is… we need to _stretch_ it. People have short lives – with a fair chance of avoiding major crises or armageddons. They are in a hurry to make love – and too right they are: they haven’t got long. We, on the other hand, have the fucking millennia and the whole harvest of pain and destruction She, in Her infinite wisdom, has dumped on us. Making love is the only remedy we have, powerful enough to fight off the horror of it all. If we do it more often… well, who knows – it might just stop working. And then what, when another crisis strikes? What will we resort to as the ultimate salvation? Pumpkin carving? It is not bad, I admit, but I’d rather have _you_ in the moment the world is closing in on me."

I look at the Jacks in their orange shadow-dance and then at him, reflected fires flickering in his amber eyes.

“Do you mean that if we do it more often, it will lose… the effect it has?”

“Exactly. And it’s quite some effect, innit? Don’t you… still feel the heat of that night, after the Non-Apocalypse? It is swirling inside me even now.”

“I do feel it, Crowley.”

“Well then. Why would you want it more often? Why would you risk losing it?”

Why indeed? And isn’t it the same question Jean wanted me to mull over? What is it that I _want_?

I guess I want to _know_, deep down. And a millennium is so long you can’t keep up this knowing.

It’s not what I say out loud though.

“Perhaps… perhaps… the thought of waiting for another millennium scares me. I mean, it made sense before, but now… The time of crisis will come again, surely, but are you absolutely sure that love-making would lose its power if we did it… say…”

“Once in a century?”

“I was thinking, perhaps, a decade…”

“You are one lecherous angel,” he grins and then suddenly his wings open wide, nearly catching fire on the candles. “And quite a tempter. Aren’t you? How can someone who sucks at flirting be so good at tempting?”

“I have the best teacher ever.”

I open my wings too – I have a hunch I am going to need them soon.

“Tell you what. If you catch me, you can have me. Today. I’d say we need it – we are both having a crisis right now, aren’t we? A new kind of crisis. What do you say?”

He kicks off and hovers in the air. The shop opens its door immediately, ready to do his bidding.

“What… now? Through London?”

“Above it, silly. There is just the right kind of fog for erotic hide-and-seek. Are you in?”

All kinds of doors open and close inside me. There’s dizziness and there are sparks, there’s a ship swaying and a fire-breathing mountain, all floating by. What if he is right – and we _need_ to make it stretch, or else..? _Be bold_, said the tip. And another said, _don’t take it too seriously_.

“Are you _in_, angel? I haven’t got all night.”

Am I overthinking this or not thinking enough?

“Are we partners, Crowley? Are we a couple?”

He rolls his eyes – his magnetic, volcanic eyes full of sparks. I know my eyes are wide open as I take him in, hovering there against the open door. He _is_ the most amazing creature in the universe.

And I remember _being_ this creature. I remember looking into my own eyes and feeling the pull of black wings behind my back. We are too intertwined, and we _are_ a couple, and if _he_ is in, _I_ am in.

“You can have a 3-minute start, demon.”

“Is that so? Whole 3 minutes? You’ll never catch up.”

“Fair enough, our existential remedy will be safe then. Off you go!”

He flaps his wings dramatically several times and then is gone with a whiff. I look at the four Demons and the Holy Grail and tell them to behave. Then I ask the shop not to let anyone in and keep an eye on the Jacks. Then I step outside and breathe in the chilly, damp air of foggy London. I spread my wings and kick off. I have a new ability that Crowley doesn’t know about yet: I can feel his presence now, whether he wants it or not, just as he can mine. There is a trail of invisible sparks in the fog that I smell rather than see. It leads south. I follow it, gradually gaining speed. For a while the speed becomes the only thought I have and then I see a silhouette in the fog ahead. Moving not too fast for me and not too slowly. Just exactly the right existential speed.

Exactly the right rhythm.

**Comments under the post**

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: All right, soldiers, Angel and Demon Writing Army has completed its mission. Celebration operation tonight, as planned.

**Sergeant Tattoo**: Hurray! I’ll bring some tricks and treats. Guess what my Halloween costume will be.

**Sergeant Angel Cake:** I bet it will go well with mine.

**As_Era_Failed: **Well, I’ve enjoyed this little history of the world in six fucks, as well as the other Angel and Demon Army stories. Not that angels and demons really do it this way, but as long as you guys are happy. Keep having fun.

**Sergeant Angel Cake: **Well, thanks. Do you know “the way they really do it” then?


End file.
